The Hungarian-made Automated Telescope (HAT) surveys are a set of
projects designed to search
for exoplanets
in orbit around bright stars using small robotic telescopes. These
couple off-the-shelf lens and astrograph systems with large-format CCD
cameras, robust hardware, and sophisticated control software to allow
fully autonomous 24-hour operations for all of our observing sites
across the globe. The HAT surveys' Principal Investigator
is Gáspár
Bakos, Associate Professor in
the Department of
Astrophysical Sciences
at Princeton University.

The original HATNet survey started in
2003, and has discovered
60 exoplanets to
date. The HATSouth survey extended
the reach of our project to the Southern hemisphere, and has
discovered 35 planets since
its start in 2009. HATPI, the newest
of the HAT surveys, is in active development. It will monitor the
entire sky visible from its site in Chile to detect exoplanets around
bright stars and provide real-time monitoring and alerts for transient
astrophysical phenomena, such as novae and near-Earth asteroids.